Traumatic brain injury is the most common cause of death and disability in young people including sport athletes and soldiers, people under 45 years of age in the industrialized countries, representing a growing health problem in developing countries, as well as in aging communities. Treatment of the latter is a serious challenge for modern medicine. This type of injury leads to many kinds of disorders and, quite often, to disability. These issue require development of new methods for brain trauma treatment. The new approach to brain trauma treatment was studied in murine experiments. In particular, sodium salt of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was used. This preparation is a drug known as a mixture of peptides with immunomodulatory effect which is widely used for different kinds of therapy. Derinat, a sodium salt of DNA, isolated from the caviar of Russian sturgeon, is a proven immunomodulator for treatment of diseases associatd with reactive oxygen species (ROS), including brain ischemia-reperfusion (IR) injury. Here we show that treatment with Derinat exert neuroprotective, anti-oxidative, and anti-inflammatory effects in experimental model of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in rats. Intraperitoneal injection of Derinat several times over 3 days after TBI showed less pronounced damage of the injured brain area. Immunohistochemical study showed that the Derinat-induced morphological changes of microglia in cerebral cortex and hippocampus 7 days after TBI. TBI-induced accumulation of 8-oxoguanine (8-oxoG), the marker of oxidative damage, was significantly attenuated by Derinat administration, both on 7th and 14th day after TBI. To investigate cellular mechanism of anti-inflammatory effects, the primary cultures of murine microglia supplied with ATP (50 M and 1 mM), as a substance released at injured site, were used to mimic the in vitro inflammatory response. Derinate treatment caused an increase of glial levels of mRNAs encoding neurotrophic factor (GDNF) and nerve growth factor (NGF) in the presence of ATP, whereas tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) mRNA was inhibited by ATP with or without Derinat. Interleukin-6 (IL-6) mRNA expression was not affected by ATP but was increased by Derinat. Both mRNA and protein levels of ATP-induced TNFα production were significantly inhibited by Derinat. These results partially contribute to understanding mechanisms of immunomodulatory effects of DNA preparations in traumatic brain injury.
Treatment of traumatic brain injury with anti-inflammatory drugs
